


energy

by foxmagpie



Series: little gifts [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 06:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19371565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmagpie/pseuds/foxmagpie
Summary: The girls try to decipher Rio's decision to save the dubby... and Rio shows up unexpectedly. After 2x07, before 2x08.---“Ladies.” That soft, measured drawl hits Beth like a ton of bricks. She turns towards the voice and there’s Rio, standing at the end of the hallway from the mudroom entrance. He’s wearing his beanie and his hands are tucked into his bomber jacket casually, but there’s a smug grin on his face. “Am I interruptin’ girls night?”Beth flushes a deep crimson and feels her heart in her throat. At best, he’d heard Annie’s big dick energy line (Beth wants to crawl in a hole) but at worst he heard them theorizing whether or not he has feelings for her (if she could die in the hole, that would be preferable). Annie’s head swivels to Rio and back to Beth, her eyes wide as saucers, as she mouths, “Oh my god.”“I wasn’t expecting you,” Beth says, looking him in the eyes. She tries to keep her voice steady.“I know,” Rio says, nodding almost imperceptibly. “And?”“Just—nothing,” Beth says. “Why are you here?”Rio looks between Beth and Annie and Ruby. “Business,” he says. He smiles coyly. “Why else?”---





	energy

Beth doesn’t get a chance to see Annie or Ruby for the next few days, but when they finally get together for wine and _Real Housewives_ , she’s touched when Ruby pulls a carefully folded, small pink quilt out of her purse once the episode ends.

“I kept thinking about the dubby,” Ruby says. “I remember when Sara misplaced that horrible stuffed hippo years ago. I’m _still_ trying to catch back up on the sleep I lost that week.”

Beth traces over Ruby’s careful stitches and studies the patterns she’d used: in one pattern, ballerinas of all shapes and sizes; in another, silvery crowns on top of a pink background; in others, stripes and dots and chevron.

Beth loves it. She’s contemplating whether she should mention that Jane’s dubby is safely returned to her, or whether it would make her look thankless, when Annie cuts in, “Jesus, where do you find the time and energy to do this? I made one recipe from Pinterest, like, weeks ago and I’m not sure I’ll ever recover.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve never even baked cookies,” Beth points out, relieved that Annie’s changed the subject. “Pinterest is the big leagues. Start smaller next time. Maybe make any other type of sandwich other than peanut butter and jelly. Make top ramen on a stove top instead of the microwave. Try a vegetable.”

Annie rolls her eyes and huffs before taking the blanket from Beth’s hands to look at it more closely. Beth notices Ruby rubbing at her eyes and trying to stifle a yawn. Beth is actually feeling much more rested than usual; there haven’t been any drops for the last couple days, so she’s back on her normal (well, new normal) schedule.

“Seriously, though, this looks like a lot of work. It’s nice,” Annie lifts her glass to Ruby and hands the blanket back to Beth.

“Yeah. Well. I’m having trouble sleeping, anyway.” Ruby starts playing with her fingers—her tic for when something’s weighing on her. “I read somewhere that it’s better to get up and switch gears than it is to just lie there in bed, trying to force yourself to fall asleep. Jane couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep. So I thought…” She nods in the direction of the blanket. “At least I could try to do something to help her.”

Beth lifts the corner of her mouth into a smile and is about to ask Ruby what’s wrong when Ruby interrupts her quickly, asking, “So, how is Jane holding up?”

“Oh, well,” Beth tries to stall and come up with something, but lying to Ruby is different than lying to the FBI, Dean, or even Rio. “Actually… the dubby’s been safely returned. I _love_ this, though, and so will Jane. Thank you so much.” She pats Ruby on the hand and leans her head on Ruby’s shoulder.

“It’s back?” Annie asks, brow furrowing in confusion. “You went _back_ to that house? Did you go into that basement? ALONE?” Annie’s face contorts into something horrible as she imagines what must be down there.

“God, no,” Beth denies.

Ruby leans away from Beth, trying to crane her neck to look at her, making it so Beth has to lift her head up from Ruby’s shoulder. Beth takes it as a good opportunity to get up to take the wine glasses back into the kitchen, but Annie and Ruby jump up to follow her.

“After robbing us, they just _returned_ it to you?” Ruby asks incredulously.

“Oh my god,” Annie says, realizing. “Gang Friend got them to return it to you! Did they come to the _house_?”

“No. No,” Beth says, turning her back to them to rinse out the wine glasses. “That’s… not exactly what happened.”

“So what happened?” Ruby asks, getting settled on a bar stool.

Beth turns around and plasters on a smile, trying to deflect. “Thank you so much for the blanket, Ruby, really. Jane’s going to _love_ it.”

“Nuh uh,” Annie says, while Ruby talks over her saying, “Yeah, you said that already.”

“Spill,” Annie commands. “I have to know if Gang Friend expanded his enterprise into reclaiming lost baby blankets. Can you _imagine_?” Her face breaks out in glee.

“Okay,” Beth surrenders. “Yes. _Rio_ —” she emphasizes, giving Annie a pointed look, “—got it back for—” She nearly says “me” but at the last second changes it to “Jane.”

“Well, did he get our wallets, too?” Annie asks.

“No, no wallets. Just the dubby.”

“Ugh,” Annie scoffs. “No offense, I’d trade a sleepless Jane for being able to skip spending one minute at the DMV to renew my license. Any day.”

Ruby shakes her head in disbelief, and Beth rolls her eyes and says, “Noted.”

“The mental image of Gang Friend, head-to-toe black clothing and his gold gun tucked into his waistband, all hard and shit, waltzing into your backyard holding the tiny, fluffy, pink dubby. Ugh,” Annie makes a chef kissing gesture with her fingers. “Too good.”

Annie slides out of her chair and tries to posture herself like Rio, head tilted at an angle, looking down at an imaginary blanket thief. She makes the fingers of her right hand turn into a gun and swaggers over to Ruby, pressing it to her face. In a comically bad impersonation of Rio, she says in a deep voice, “Yo, bitch, I’mma need you to. Hand. Over. The. Baby. Blanket.”

Ruby rolls her eyes and pushes Annie’s hand off of her face, shaking her head. Annie bursts into laughter and reclaims her seat at the island.

"How drunk are you?" Ruby asks.

"Just enough to be this fun," Annie shoots back. Annie had started the night with harder alcohol, only switching to wine later. She's basically an open nerve right now since Sadie still hasn't forgiven her for sleeping with Gregg.

“That’s not what he sounds like,” Beth says matter-of-factly about Annie's attempt to imitate Rio.

Annie lifts her eyebrows. “Like yours is any better.”

“So what did he say?” Ruby asks, refocusing them. “Why’d he do it? It’s so… _nice_ of him?”

“I don’t know,” Beth says honestly, but her cheeks tinge pink as she remembers harassing him on the phone after midnight. “I mean, he was a real ass about it all when Jane went missing.”

“How’d he know Jane went missing?” Ruby asks, slowing piecing it together. “Is that where you went that night? To see him?”

Beth rolls her head back and tries to stretch out her shoulders. She’s feeling tense.

“Back up,” Annie says. “Tell us everything.”

This is against Beth's better judgment, but she recounts meeting up with Rio, how she’d thought they had taken Jane. Beth's not normally the type to overshare, but she actually feels like she needs a second and third opinion for once. She tells them how he’d yelled at her, spat in her face by calling her a drug dealer when she insisted she was a mother, told her off for messing up, how it could cost her jail time (Ruby flinches here) or her life (Annie flinches here). Then she tells them how he'd basically avoided her by leaving it in the mail, and how Dean had found it and given her that look, but she leaves out the phone call.

“Wow,” Annie says, nodding, when Beth’s finished. Ruby just sits there, a little stunned, and mumbles, “Huh.”

“I know,” Beth says, leaning onto her elbows on the island and stretching out her back. “It doesn’t make any sense. He was all—” she drops her voice an octave, “—‘who cares?’” She returns to her own voice. “And then he went and got it anyway.” Beth shrugs.

“See?” Annie says, gesturing to Beth’s Rio impersonation. “No better. That was… no better. It was maybe even worse.”

Beth sighs. Ruby ignores Annie and theorizes that maybe Rio is uncomfortable doing nice things, so that's why he left it in the mail instead of delivering it himself.

"Maybe," Beth says. "But I'm still not sure why he did the nice thing in the first place."

“Maybe he went to double check that Jane wasn’t really there. He’s a father. I bet he’s got some sort of soft spot for kids.”

“Yeah, uh huh,” Annie says sarcastically. “That’s what his ‘soft spot’ is for: kids!”

Beth’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I knew he had a hard-on for you,” Annie says. “But the soft spot is new.”

Ruby chuckles a little, but Beth’s eyes are wide.

“It does sort of seem like Homeboy’s caught feelings,” Ruby agrees. “I mean, this is the first time he's done something that's brought him no gain whatsoever. And on that relevant note—you _still_ never told us how the sex was.”

“Yeah, I gotta know: is that big dick energy legit?” Annie cackles.

Beth squints at Annie, trying to understand what she’s going on about. “I don’t know what that means, and—” she holds up a finger, cutting off Annie about to interject “—I don’t want to.”

Beth doesn’t even know how to refute this absurd claim that Rio _likes_ her; doing so would only make her feel like an insecure teenager denying that she’s noticed the cute boy in homeroom making eyes at her. She’s not oblivious, she’s seen the way Rio eyes her up and down, but she’s almost certain that has less to do with attraction and… and... _feelings_ , and more to do with power. As embarrassing as it is, she can’t deny that she knows that he knows that those looks and that proximity make her jittery.

“Ladies.” That soft, measured drawl hits Beth like a ton of bricks. She turns towards the voice and there’s Rio, standing at the end of the hallway from the mudroom entrance. He’s wearing his beanie and his hands are tucked into his bomber jacket casually, but there’s a smug grin on his face. “Am I interruptin’ girls night?”

Beth flushes a deep crimson and feels her heart in her throat. At _best_ , he’d heard Annie’s big dick energy line (Beth wants to crawl in a hole), but at _worst_ he heard them theorizing whether or not he has feelings for her (if she could die in the hole, that would be preferable). Annie’s head swivels to Rio and back to Beth, her eyes wide as saucers as she mouths, “Oh my god.”

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Beth says, looking him in the eyes. She tries to keep her voice steady.

“I know,” Rio says, nodding almost imperceptibly. “And?”

“Just—nothing,” Beth says. “Why are you here?”

Rio looks between Beth and Annie and Ruby. “Business,” he says. He smiles coyly. “Why else?”

Annie and Ruby exchange a look, eyebrows raised. Ruby at least looks like she’d rather be anywhere else but hearing this conversation, but Annie looks like someone would have to forcibly pick her up and throw her over their shoulder to try and remove her from being a witness to this.

“I mean—I mean what _specific_ business?” Beth's heartbeat is going a hundred miles a minute. She focuses on steadying her breathing. She’s mortified, but as long as there are several feet between them, she should be okay. Rio never invades her space or touches her in front of Annie and Ruby like he does when they’re alone, or when they’re in front of Dean—which is another piece of evidence in the _no feelings, just a power play_ column.

“New drop schedule,” he says. “Everything’s gettin’ moved around. I need you to update your calendar."

Ruby starts playing with her hands again, twisting her wedding ring around and around.

“Why?” Beth asks, eyes narrowing.

“Doesn’t concern you,” he says. “You just need to make the changes.”

“Did something bad happen?” she asks.

“It’s aight,” he says nonchalantly. “Just gettin’ ahead of trouble.”

He walks towards her, closing the distance, and Beth grinds her teeth. She's not ready to be so close to him after embarrassing herself on that phone call.

“Here,” Rio says, one step too close for normal personal space boundaries. He slowly reaches his hand to his back pocket and pulls something out.

Annie and Ruby sit completely still at the island, saying nothing.

Rio hands Beth a folded up sheet of paper. She opens it and sees his messy scrawl all over it, but it’s organized. It looks like he’d carefully drawn out a column chart with VIN numbers and dates, addresses and timestamps. It’s so neat, she can tell he’d had to use a ruler to make it. She tries to hide a grin, imagining him concentrating on keeping the lines straight. “Everything’s pushed back, so you got a couple more days off.”

“Okay,” Beth says slowly, setting the paper on the island. He’s still too close. Beth can feel the heat emanating off him and smell his cologne. She’s concentrating very hard on forming words, but she realizes that most of their other scheduling and coordinating is done without a home visit. “You know, you could’ve just called. Or, you know, Google Sheets works for this kinda thing.”

“Yeah, we’re movin’ off electronics for a bit,” he says. “Gimme your phone." He holds out his hand.

“What? Why?”

Rio just cocks an eyebrow at her. He wasn’t asking, she realizes. She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and extends it towards him. When his hand brushes against hers when he takes it, she feels electrified. God. This is not normal—she has to get a handle on herself.

She sees Rio open up her contacts and scroll and scroll and scroll. “I’m deletin’ my number,” he says. “Where is it?”

Beth is _mortified_. One drunken phone call, and now he’s _deleting his number_? She is _so_ glad she didn’t mention the phone call to Annie and Ruby, who, through the corner of her eye, she reads as being completely confused but unwilling to disrupt the show.

“Uh—” Beth clears her throat. “You’re under ‘Ron.’”

Rio’s mouth drops open a little bit and he swivels from Beth to Annie and Ruby. He cocks his head to the side, baffled. “The ginger from _Harry_ _Potter_? What kinda white boy name you programmin’ me under?”

He will never stop surprising her, it seems. Rio knows _Harry Potter_?

“No, uh,” Beth stammers. “Before we knew your name, Annie—” she nods and gestures towards her stunned sister. “—Annie mistakenly thought your name was Ron.” He stares at her, unreadable, so Beth rushes to continue explaining. “I was worried if the police got a hold of my phone somehow—I didn’t want them to figure out we had contact. So. Ron.”

Rio’s expression softens into begrudging respect. He nods once, then breaks eye contact. Beth watches as he finds the contact and presses the delete button. She feels pained—she’s totally cut off from him now, can only rely on unexpected visits now, _maybe_. Maybe he was just going to start dropping off schedules in her mailbox like the dubby, avoid talking to her completely.

Then, Rio moves closer into Beth’s space, basically touching her. Beth stands there, stunned, unsure of what to do, but he surprises her by reaching to pull open the junk drawer in the island (of course he knows what all her drawers are—he’s broken in and rifled through her things more than once now). The drawer only comes out a few inches before it’s stalled by Beth’s body.

“Excuse me,” he says, putting his hand ever-so-gently on Beth’s hip and nudging her so she’ll take a step back. Beth stops breathing. “You got a pen in here? And some paper?”

Beth nods. He pulls out a wrinkled receipt and smooths it out on the counter. “You need this?” He turns it over and looks at it. “Craft World?”

“Uh, yes, actually,” Beth says. “I need to—” she clears her throat. “—return some yarn. I was going to make a blanket, but... I don’t need to anymore.” She lets this hang in the air for a moment, refusing to break eye contact.

Rio smirks, nods, and licks his lips. “Mhm,” he says, acknowledging that he realizes Beth still _wants_ him to say more, but he isn't going to take the bait. “So… paper?”

Beth has suddenly forgotten every single thing about her own house. Rio’s proximity and his smell and his lip-licking, the way he’d touched her hip, all in front of an audience, all happening too soon after she called him at midnight and tried to get him to tell her why he did this nice thing for her… all happening after she’s almost certain he heard them talking about his penis… all after he just made her delete his number... It’s too much.

“Beth,” Annie says, clearing her throat loudly. “The notepad? On the fridge?”

Beth moves quickly to retrieve a piece of paper from the magnetized notepad, usually used for grocery lists, and hands it to Rio.

“What’s your number, mama?” he asks. He’s got his pen poised, ready to write.

“What?” Beth asks. Her mouth feels dry. _Now he’s called her mama in front of Annie and Ruby._

Rio sighs, exasperated. “I ditched the old phone, gettin’ a new one after this thing blows over. I aint about to transfer over the data, so. I need your number.”

“Oh my god. Are they tapping your phone?” Beth asks, putting the puzzle pieces together.

Rio ignores the question, but Beth can tell she's on the right track by the way he works his jaw. “Your number,” he repeats.

Beth dictates her phone number and Rio writes it down on the piece of paper, and then he scrawls Elizabeth and underlines it again, twice. He returns the pen to the junk drawer and closes it gently. Beth stands rigidly still, waiting for this to all be over.

“You look all tense,” he says to Beth, looking her up and down. “I can help with that.”

Unable to contain herself any longer, an indescribable and very loud noise comes from Annie’s throat. Rio glances at her, and Beth sputters, “Excuse me?”

Rio lets the moment hang over everything for an extra beat, then says casually, smiling, “Yeah, I know a pretty good masseuse.” Beth can tell he’s enjoying this. Bastard. “I could hook you up.”

Beth’s speechless. Rio puts his head down, letting his grin fade into indifference as he folds the paper back up and puts it in his pocket.

“Aight, I’ll hit you up—during _regular_ business hours,” he says pointedly. Ruby and Beth look at each other, aware that they’re missing some context. “I want a better code name next time, though. If I gotta be from _Harry Potter_ , at least make it someone cool, yeah?”

“Ron’s cool,” Ruby says at the same time Annie says, “Got it: Neville.” Annie makes finger guns and clicks them at him, far too amused at herself. Rio just stares at her.

“No?” Annie says. “How about... Mundungus? He’s a petty criminal.”

“Nah,” Rio says, shaking his head.

“You want a larger criminal?” Annie asks. “Because there’s—”

“Just think of someone with uh—whatchu call it?—the right _energy_. Yeah.” Rio turns to Beth. She’s wide-eyed, unable to hide her shame. He raises his eyebrows, pulls his lower lip into his mouth and bites it, staring hard at her. He can’t hold the expression for long, though. He ends up laughing—good-naturedly, Beth thinks—before he turns on his heel and exits through the mudroom door again.

Beth rubs at her neck, trying to dissolve the tension, as her face glows red. When they hear the side door slam shut, Annie bursts into laughter, and Ruby lets out a low whistle.

“I don’t even know where to begin with that,” Annie says. “There’s so much to choose from... _Mama_.” She wiggles her eyebrows.

Beth shakes her head, shutting down the conversation. “Don’t,” she says. Ruby nods her head, immediately on board.

“Oh, come on!” Annie begs. “That was incredible.”

“Nope. Nope, we’re not going to do this,” Beth says. She smooths her hands down her shirt, trying to maintain composure.

“He knows Harry Potter!” Annie shouts. “Do you think he’s read them, or just seen the movies? You know, I secretly think he might be, like, into books.”

“Come on, Annie, leave it alone,” Ruby says, coming to Beth’s aid.

“Okay, so he definitely heard me talking about his dick,” Annie continues, ignoring Ruby. “So I mean, if he already knows we know, you might as well tell us about it. I know too much about Deansie, so I think it’s only fair you try to expunge that knowledge from my mind by telling me this. Does he have, like, tattoos down there?”

“I’m not doing this,” Beth insists, but she has to wonder: _does_ he have tattoos?

“Expunge? There’s a ten dollar word,” Ruby says. “Where’d you learn that?”

Annie pouts. “I know _words_ ,” she insists. Ruby clocks her with the face of disbelief. “Okay, fine. Sadie had it on her vocab test last week, sue me. Or rather, _litigate_ me.”

“No, you’re using that wrong,” Ruby says. Annie makes a face. Beth is overwhelmed with affection for Ruby right about now, until it turns out that Annie is not actually all that distracted from her goal.

“Oh, come on, I was all pissed off before, but now I want to be supportive… so hit me with ‘em: all the scandalous details,” Annie says, waving both of her hands in her own direction.

Ruby tries (and fails) once more to save the day by changing the subject. “So, you need us to go so you can update your calendar or...?”

“You heard him. I have a couple of extra days free now, so I’ve got time.” Beth shrugs.

“Yeah, time to tell us about bangin’ the gangbanger,” Annie says. She’s delighted with her own joke. “Did you do it here? Isn’t that what you told Turner way back when?” Annie glances at the kitchen table. “Was it dirty? Like kitchen-table-sex dirty?”

Beth cannot imagine what Annie would do with the information that Rio took her from behind in a bar bathroom while Dean settled the bill. She would lose her mind. For half a second, Beth considers telling her just to stun her into silence.

“Seriously, though, I bet it was good,” Annie says. “I’ve never seen so much sexual tension between two people that have already boned.”

All of the girls startle when the mudroom door opens again, much louder this time. There’s some shuffling and banging around and they turn to look and find Dean coming in, dressed in his krav maga workout gear. He’s got his bag swung over his shoulder and he’s sweaty.

“Hi!” Beth says in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice. Ruby smiles awkwardly, and Annie grunts in acknowledgment. Beth has not been so thrilled to see Dean in a long, long time—and this might be the only time since she’s met Rio that she’s given Dean a point when it comes to the mens’ differences. (Well. Besides the murders.) Thank god Dean doesn’t have the grace and stealth to enter a room silently and eavesdrop.

“Beth, what’s this?” he asks. He’s turning something over in his hands, but Beth can’t see it very well yet. He walks over to her, and she sees it a bottle of alcohol—bourbon—with a sticky note on it.

“Where was that?” she asks, her breath hitching.

“Top of the washing machine,” he says. His eyebrows furrow. He reads the note. “‘Sounded like you were about to run out’?”

 _How much can one person blush in a 30 minute period?_ Beth gives a halfhearted smile, pretending she’s not ruffled. Rio was not only making fun of her for how much she had drunk before calling him, but he also knew Beth and Dean had just swapped roles—she at work, he keeping house now—and he had also _left another gift for Dean to find._

“Oh, that’s just a gift from—” Where’s she going with this?

Annie holds a hand out in front of her, as if studying a manicure that doesn’t exist, refusing to look at Dean.

“—Me,” Ruby speaks up. “I, um, knew that Jane was having trouble sleeping without the dubby so… I knew Beth needed a little grown up juice to… you know… get through it.” She’s clearly making it up as she goes along. Beth looks at her, and Ruby mouths a panicked, “I’m trying!”

Dean nods long and slow, looking closely at the handwriting on the note. Beth reaches over very casually and slips Rio’s new drop schedule in her pocket. Dean doesn’t challenge the lie, though. He just says, “Jane lost her dubby?”

Beth plasters on a big smile and walks over to take the bottle from Dean. “Oh, just for a few days,” she lies easily. “You’ll never guess where we found it.”

“No,” Dean says, voice strained. “No, I bet I won’t.”

The awkwardness settles over the room and Annie and Ruby take that as their cue to leave. Afterward, Beth makes up an elaborate story about searching for the dubby and keeps jabbering on so Dean won’t ask any more questions. She tells him all about the quilt Ruby made and goes so far as to describe the stitching and the patterns. He nods along and every now and then he interjects an “uh huh,” but he never interrupts her. His eyes are glazed, though, and Beth knows he’s not listening—something that used to drive her mad, but now makes her sigh a breath of relief.

She can’t help but compare this small thing to Rio, too: even when he’s pointedly ignoring answering her questions, driving her mad in a different way, she knows he’s hearing every word.

After what feels like an eternity, but is probably only a few minutes, Dean tells Beth he’s going to go up and shower. Beth nods and watches him head upstairs to the kids' bathroom, feeling off-kilter. Rio hadn't known it was girls night when he dropped in with this bottle of bourbon.

When Dean's out of sight, Beth grabs the bottle and heads into her bedroom. She sets the bottle on the dresser under the mirror she’d fantasized about Rio smashing in with a crowbar. The gift actually makes her relax, despite her embarrassment. He’d been annoyed, but he was joking about it now, so her earlier worry that he was going to switch to communication-by-mail was, she realizes now, an overreaction. She carefully peels the note off the bottle and tucks both it and the new schedule into her bedside table drawer.

As she’s falling asleep, Beth wonders how long it will be before Rio contacts her with his new number, and what name she’ll program him in as in her phone when he finally does.


End file.
